CSDE Fellow Lee Fiorio and CSDE Regional Affiliate Emilio Zagheni Co-author Study On Measuring Migration With Digital Trace Data
Posted: 1/18/2021 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Fellow and Trainee Lee Fiorio and CSDE Regional Affiliate Emilio Zagheni, along with co-authors, recently published an article in Demography examining the effect of time in migration measurement. The article provides a general framework for converting digital trace data into estimates of migration transitions and for systematically analyzing their variation along a quasi-continuous time scale, analogous to a survival function. The authors develop two hypotheses regarding the behavior of their estimated migration transition functions, and test these using geotagged Tweets and Gowalla check-ins in the United States, and cell-phone call detail records in Senegal. They conclude that the common patterns across their three empirical data sets point to an emergent research agenda using digital trace data to study the specific functional relationship between estimates of migration and time and how this relationship varies by geography and population characteristics. They also conclude that there is a need for evaluating the internal consistency of migration estimates derived from digital trace data before using them in substantive research. To read the article click here.